Returning Greene 'thrives' on booing, says Giants coach

If Toby Greene is booed by Swans supporters on Saturday night - as he routinely is - Greater Western Sydney coach Leon Cameron won't be overly fazed.

While sections of the AFL industry in Melbourne are locked in a peculiar debate over whether fans were entitled to jeer Scott Pendlebury on Anzac Day and Gary Ablett last week, Cameron said it was simply part and parcel of the live sport experience, and had been for a long time.

And Greene, a Giants fan favourite who naturally tends to rub opposition supporters the wrong way, lives for it.

"Some players just absolutely thrive on it," Cameron said. "There's always going to be tribalism from both sides - that's the great thing about elite sport, whether it's our game, rugby or soccer. You're always going to support one team, which is outstanding, which creates atmosphere.

Advertisement

"Toby thrives on that stuff. He's used to it, it doesn't worry him, he keeps on going."

Cameron said he understood it too. "There's emotion, 96,000 people standing at the MCG on a game that finishes with (four) points," he said. "The emotion of the game can come right down towards the end. One side is going to be clearly happy and one side is not. I can understand how it boils over a little bit, as long as we don't get too petty with it."

Greene will be playing his first match since round one in Saturday's AFL derby after the recurrence of a niggling calf issue. Nursed back to full fitness, Cameron likened the small forward to a caged lion in his willingness to return to action, and said he was likely to be given more midfield minutes in the coming weeks.

"He's so popular, he's hard at it," he said. "We haven't explored him on ball as much. I think over the next month or two if we can get him up and running we'd like to put him in the middle of the ground a little bit more. He started there, he's ended up forward but we really want to get him back in the middle because of his explosiveness and competitiveness."